Who’s afraid of home?

A couple of recent posts, both addressing very similar issues: Noting that the economy, jobs, healthcare and education are key issues for most people (especially in the US, with elections coming up), David Campbell writes: “what does photojournalism contribute to these debates? Beyond the daily campaign picture and stock political portrait, what stories are we seeing from photojournalists and documentary photographers that engage these issues? My sense is not much, and certainly not enough.” Over at No Caption Needed, Rachel Rigdon addresses a very similar issue: “Despite the Great Recession and the escalating rates of both poverty and economic inequality within the United States, finding images of poor Americans within the news often feels like a process of excavation. There is a curious deficit of photographs of the 44 million Americans living in poverty, and in lieu of using photographs, many articles on welfare or economic inequality feature graphs and charts.”